Tuesday, December 8, 2009

404, A Cautionary Tale

Don't ever create an extensive list of hyperlinks on your website. Just don't do it. It is so easy to get caught up in the excitement of cataloguing all the wonderful websites you find on your topic. Then you create your own website with a links page to these resources. And then--it falls apart. URLs change, websites go down, what was good becomes bad or redundant in the light of other new sites, and you have a mess on your hands.

A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar. All links have been tested for correctness and appropriateness.

Woohoo! A worldwide guide to all the websites for archives and special collections. This is exactly the kind of resource we need to keep track of all the other digital resources. So I eagerly navigated to the section for the Western United States and Canada and then to Washington and then to Central Washington University:

No problem. Lets try a different link. The East Benton County Historical Society? "Oops! This link appears to be broken." The Echoes of the Past Archive sounds interesting. "This domain is for sale. Please contact info@echoesarchive.com for more information." Nevermind, let's try my own Eastern Washington University--no, another 404 page. Of the first 15 links for Washington State, 11 are broken.

I do not mean to slam on the fine people at the University of Idaho, who obviously put a great deal of effort into creating this resource. No doubt they meant to maintain it, and no doubt more pressing matters have directed their attention elsewhere. This is just what happens to such endeavors.

So kids, never create extensive links pages. Or if you must, make them a wiki and leave a note asking users to fix anything they find that is broken.

We have a few college students online from college of University of Denver and we love your blog postings,so well add your rss or newsfeed for them,Thanks and please post us and leave a comment back and well link to you.Thanks Jen , Blog ManagerEastern Washington University

Yeah, UBC just redesigned their web site and broke all their links to faculty pages, with no referral pages left behind. I send them a friendly note saying I was just taking down all my links to UBC because I couldn't be bothered to rebuild them and of course I heard nothing back.

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My name is Larry Cebula and this is my professional blog. I am a Public Historian at Eastern Washington University and Assistant Digital Archivist at the Washington State Digital Archives--neither of which necessarily endorse the views here! I use this blog to explore the intersections of public and digital history. The focus is on the Inland Northwest but we may venture further afield on occasion. Here is my mission statement. Email me at LarryCebula [at] gmail [dot] com.